


The Mystery of Proud Typewriter

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Incest, Jealousy, M/M, Secrets, Sibling Incest, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:26:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set between the second and third seasons, this fic puts the brothers on a literary casefile while also dealing with Dean's death sentence.</p><p>Edwin Proud is my creation but everything else about Oxford, Memphis and their geography and local businesses is accurate (well, except for the Waffle House, because dude! Huddle House sucks!).  If you'd like to see an example of the kind of typewriter in the fic:  <a href="http://www.officemuseum.com/Munson_front.jpg">Munson #1 typewriter</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mystery of Proud Typewriter

**Chapter One: Dean’s perspective**

Sam takes his coffee from the waitress and stirs in four packets of sugar before blowing across the top of his mug. Dean can feel his brother watching him over the styrofoam rim, but Dean doesn’t look up from _The Commercial Appeal_. He’s tired of this bullshit, of these furtive glances, and Dean figures that maybe if he ignores Sam he’ll eventually cut it the hell out. 

Memphis has been a little break for them, and one that Dean normally wouldn’t have agreed to, but things are different now. He gets that, even if the way Sam’s trying so damn hard only makes Dean feel the little time he’s got left that much more intensely. But walking along Beale with a hurricane in his hand, Sam smearing barbecue down his chin at Rendezvous, the ducks at the Peabody—yeah, Dean’s glad for that quiet smile on Sam’s face, those moments of standing still. But now he’s restless, the urge to hit the road worrying at him again.

“Hey, Sammy, look at this,” Dean says, sliding the newspaper across the Formica countertop.

Sam reads aloud: “Adrian Smith, a graduate student in the Department of English at the University of Mississippi, was discovered dead in the parking lot of Proud Museum in the early morning of June 15th. Smith was the assistant to the curator of the museum and an up-and-coming Proud scholar who received the Edwin J. Proud Fellowship for his 2006 article, ‘We are Family: Atavistic Guilt in Edwin J. Proud’s _The Darkness_.’ Authorities have deemed the death a suicide. So?”

Dean reaches into his jacket and pulls out Dad’s journal, its weight familiar and comforting in his palm. Dean pages through until he finds the entry he wants. “Seems like a lot of people connected to the Proud family have ended up dead over the years. Always suicide. Dad never could make out the pattern, but he was sure something hinky is going on.”

For a moment, Sam looks like he’s going to argue, his jaw clenched in that stubborn way that reminds Dean so much of their father. Then Sam hunches over the eggs Benedict congealing on his plate and when he looks up at Dean through his bangs, all he says is, “I’m driving.”

@@@

“So, what we got?”

Dean dials down the radio until Sam’s whiny rock is just the barest hint of piano and snare. “This Proud guy was a writer. . .”

Sam cuts him off. “Really, Dean? _The Darkness_ , _The Haunting of Weatherly Manor_ , _Blood Sacrifice_? Edwin Proud’s practically the grandfather of modern horror.”

“Okay, college boy. You done showing off?” Dean thumps him on the chest and Sam rolls his eyes and gestures for Dean to go on. “So, Proud wrote all those books and then moved from Rhode Island to Oxford, Mississippi to work on his masterpiece. He never finished it, though. Six months later, he slit his wrists. Two of his sons committed suicide before they were thirty and so did a granddaughter in 1973. Since then, the first curator of the Proud museum, two of the custodial staff, one of the professors at Ole Miss that specializes in Proud studies, and now this Smith guy have offed themselves.”

“Did Dad have any idea what’s causing them to do it?”

“Nadda.”

“Figures he’d leave us to do all the legwork,” Sam says and turns the radio back up. 

A year ago, Dean would have read resentment into those words and he wouldn’t have been wrong then. But Sam’s smiling and shaking his head and his tone of voice is fond. Dean remembers the surprisingly solid grip of his father’s hand on his shoulder and he clears his throat. “Seriously, Sammy, how can you listen to this crap? Is that a freaking xylophone?”

“Shut up, jerk. Ryan Adams is not crap.”

“Wake me up when you’re done having your period.” Dean presses his face to the window and closes his eyes. It’s raining, drumming steady on the roof of the Impala and the glass is cool under his cheek. Dean shifts in the seat and his knee bumps against Sam’s; he dozes off, the warmth of Sam’s leg bleeding into his own.

@@@

Dean drops his bag on the bed closest to the window and slings open the curtains. “Oh, Sammy. I think I’m gonna love this town. Look. There’s a Waffle House in the hotel parking lot.”

Sam laughs, loud and bright with his teeth showing. “What is with you, man? You get like this every time we cross the Mason Dixon line for more than five minutes.”

“Everything’s fried in bacon fat, beer is cheap, and the chicks can’t wait to show me some of that famous Southern hospitality. What’s not to love?”

They’ve still got another hour before the museum opens for the afternoon so Dean stretches out on top of the covers. Sam flips open the laptop and types, his face gone ghostly and strange in the blue glow from the monitor. Dean knows what Sam is doing, what he’s been doing every spare second since they rode out of that cemetery in Wyoming. Dean also knows that his brother thinks he’s found the answer. Sam is less frantic now; he reads more slowly, filling up yellow legal pads with careful notes and sketching out pictures of god-knows-what with a twelve pack of colored pencils. Sam has sharpened them so many times that they look ridiculously small in his hands.

Sometimes, like now, Dean can’t check the fear that coils deeply in his gut, that clenches his chest until he can barely breathe. He watches Sam catch the tip of his tongue in the corner of his mouth as he copies something from the screen and wonders just how much of himself Sam is willing to sacrifice, how far Sam is willing to go to keep him out of hell. Dean suspects he knows the answer, knows its bitter and final certainty firsthand.

The remote is on Sam’s bed and Dean uses that excuse to move, to flop down on his belly with his feet near Sam’s head. He wedges his elbow under the crook of Sam’s knee and after a heartbeat, Sam rests one hand on Dean’s calf, his long fingers wrapped around the curve of muscle there.

@@@

 

The parking lot of Proud museum is nearly full and a cluster of people are gathered at its far end under the streetlight, pointing their fingers and holding their hands to their mouths. Dean puts the car in park and cuts the engine. “Let’s go talk to the vultures.”

He and Sam walk in step across the asphalt, a habit Dean hadn’t paid attention to for a long while, not until he was walking alone. Now, Dean lays awake at night waiting for Sam’s breath to synch up with his own in sleep; when they speak in tandem, Dean punches Sam in the arm and yells, “Jinx,” bitching until Sam brings him a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine. Dean doesn’t want these moments to go unmarked any longer. 

“He died right here,” a girl says to her friend as Dean and Sam ease into the periphery of the group. “Look, you can still see the bloodstains.” The girls are both dressed in tiny shorts and pink T-shirts with Delta Gamma logos; the redhead’s hair adds a couple inches to her height and Dean can’t imagine the black magic she uses to maintain those curls in this heat.

“What’s going on?” Dean says. “We leave town for one kegger and miss all the excitement.” He smiles at them both, the cocky grin that gets him laid every time and the redhead takes half a step towards him and leans into his space.

“Didn’t you hear?” she says. “Some crazy grad student shot himself a few days ago. It’s been all over the news.”

“They know why he did it?” Sam asks, his face earnest and interested and Dean can tell the puppy dog eyes aren’t lost on Redhead’s friend. Something vicious that Dean will not allow himself to name twists through his belly; he looks away, focuses instead on the oil-slicked traces of Adrian Smith left on the pavement.

“I think reading all those scary stories over and over again just messed with his mind, you know? Like maybe he thought they were real or something,” Redhead says. “Anyway, I heard he had this cardboard box full of stuff he’d written with him when he died. World’s longest suicide note or something.”

“Huh,” Dean says. “Well, we’ll catch you later, ladies. Sammy here’s got a book report to finish.” Dean heads for the museum, smiling back over his shoulder at the girls as he goes, and Sam follows.

“We need to get a look at whatever Smith wrote,” Sam says as he opens the door to the one story clapboard that houses the Proud collection. “Maybe we’ll find a clue there.” 

The museum is empty except for an older man drowsing on a stool just inside the doorway. Sam takes a brochure from the rack and skims it while Dean does a quick once over of the place with the EMF reader. One wall is covered entirely with books; a small plaque says most are first editions from Proud’s library that are available to patrons for checkout provided the volumes remain on museum premises. Dean sweeps the meter along each shelf and gets only a nose full of dust for his trouble. The remainder of the museum contains odds and ends from Proud’s Oxford home—photographs, a pair of cufflinks, letters and other documents, some amateur watercolors. None of these register paranormal activity. The final display in the room is an antique typewriter sitting on a marble pedestal. The caption describes it as a Munson No. 1 typewriter, circa 1890, that Proud acquired in 1937. When Dean reads the name of the original owner, he motions Sam over. 

“Holy shit, Sammy. This typewriter was H. P. Lovecraft’s. That’s a piece of history, there. The very typewriter where he invented the _Necronomicon_.” Dean reaches through the ropes and touches the typewriter, a single stroke on the F key. In that moment, he sees so clearly. All the fragments of his life kaleidoscope before him and in the spaces between memories, darkness resolves. He feels a coldness so severe that it burns, an intense spike of pain that quickly numbs before it fades completely.

Sam yanks him back by the collar and hisses, “Dean, it’s a museum. Don’t touch stuff.”

“Okay, Miss Manners. Sheesh.” Dean shrugs Sam off. “This is a bust anyway. I think our next move is to find out as much about Adrian Smith as we can.”

On the drive back to the hotel, Sam is watching him again, little looks like given the slightest provocation Sam will start emoting all over the place. And Dean just can’t. He can’t. He gives in to Sam’s need to talk everything to death and before he knows it he’ll be snotting all over his brother’s shirt and blubbering about how freaked he is. As he unlocks the door to their room, Sam takes a deep breath and opens his mouth to speak. Dean braces himself, but all Sam says is, “I’m gonna call Bobby, let him know where we are. You figure out dinner.” He pauses. “Not Waffle House.”

Dean finds the phonebook and a sheet of hotel stationery on the nightstand between their beds. He turns to the restaurant guide and jots down the address of a place on the Square that serves soul food. On impulse, Dean signs his name under the address and when he’s finished, he feels the strangest compulsion to write something more. He rolls the pencil between his fingers, listening to Sam laugh quietly at something Bobby says, and then Dean writes: _When I was nearly five, my mom went supernova._

He’s only written one line, but Dean stops there, satisfied. “That’s it,” he thinks. “That’s my beginning.”

 

**Chapter Two: Sam’s perspective**

Sam leans back in his chair and watches Dean hold court in the far corner of the bar. He’s been doing a lot of that lately, watching, and he knows he’s driving Dean crazy but Sam can’t help himself. Dean throws a dart at the board, lets one fly with a quick and fluid movement of his wrist and the table of girls checking him out practically swoons. Dean winks in their general direction and Sam knows that before long Dean will have his tongue shoved down some curvy brunette’s throat. This is his brother at work, and it bugs the hell out of Sam. Before he left for Stanford, Sam didn’t often think about the way Dean picks up women, and if he did, that thought likely ran along the lines of grudging admiration. Even after they went back on the road together, Dean’s little flings didn’t really register with Sam as anything but amusing or occasionally irritating if some girl’s daddy got all bent out of shape. 

But Sam feels differently now and he can pinpoint when everything started to change. He sat next to Dean on a motel bed and stared at the floor while Dean told him about the life the djinn had built for him. In the telling, Dean revealed more than he intended, but Sam figures that’s Dean’s way. It’s always the stuff Dean thinks he’s keeping close to the vest, sewed up tight with neat rows of surgical thread—that’s what kicks Sam in the gut, every time. “I was living with the El Sol girl, Sammy. You should’ve seen the rack on her,” he said, like this woman that only exists in magazines is someone special, like Carmen isn’t proof that Dean has never had even a single romance that his subconscious can wrangle into viability. The only relationship Dean has anymore that truly matters is with Sam, and Sam isn’t sure he can handle where that kind of thinking leads him.

Dean pulls one of the girls to him, leans down and whispers in her ear, and she shivers against him, her hands plucking at the fabric of his T-shirt. Sam turns away; all the looking he’s been doing lately, but this is nothing he wants to see. When Dean presses his lips against her jaw, dragging his teeth along her throat and down to her collarbone, Sam pushes back from the table and heads for his brother.

“Dean.” Sam hands off his beer to Dean and waits for the keys. “I’m ready to head back. You staying awhile?”

Dean smiles at the woman tucked under his arm and Sam tamps down a wistfulness that he refuses to examine closely. “Yeah. I’ll catch a ride back to the hotel. Don’t wait up.”

In the hotel room, Sam takes advantage of Dean’s absence and spreads his work across both beds. He finds the notes he’d made earlier in the day and reads them over again before firing up the laptop. He can afford to be methodical; he can take the time to do this right. Breaking Dean’s deal is the easy part; Sam had figured out how to do that before they even crossed the Wyoming state line. Keeping himself out of hell, though, that’s the tricky part. Sam knows that he is powerful, that he can do all the things the other psychic children did if he wants to badly enough, if he practices hard enough, if he gives enough of himself over to the darkness. If he lets himself unravel, Sam can make that crossroads demon spare Dean his life and his soul. But Sam won’t leave behind a mess for his brother to clean up, so he looks for ways to keep himself in check, to contain the evil that he might become once he flips that switch.

By the time Dean stumbles in, Sam is curled on his side under the covers and pretending to sleep. He listens as Dean bangs his knee into the bathroom door and curses under his breath; he listens to the heavy thud of Dean’s boots on the carpet, the toothed slide of his zipper as he shucks his jeans. Sam’s last thought before he finally falls asleep is of Dean’s hand curled possessively around that girl’s waist, his fingers resting on her hipbone.

@@@

Sam and Dean breakfast at Bottletree Bakery, this dive just off the Square. The walls are hung with folk art, paint laid thick on the canvases, fat and colorful lines that Sam thinks might feel nice to touch. Some raw, throaty blues plays low in the background, and Dean’s foot taps absently to the downbeat as he reads _The Daily Mississippian_ and licks confectioners sugar off his fingers. 

“There’s a memorial service for Smith at ten in Fulton chapel.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “We have to find some way to convince his mother to let us take a look at whatever it is he wrote. The police have already released his effects to her, so we can’t just break into the precinct and read it there.”

Dean grunts behind the paper and snitches the last of the scones from Sam’s plate.

After breakfast, they walk around the Square for a while. Dean gropes a bronze statue of Faulkner just outside City Hall and Sam snaps a picture with his cell. Even now, Sam’s first impulse is to email the photo to Ash; he sends it to Bobby instead and then window shops with Dean, their elbows jostling when the sidewalks narrow at each corner.

Sam pulls Dean inside Square Books and immediately loses himself in the two tables of signed copies next to the cash register. He runs his fingers over the signatures, over the cool slickness of virgin pages, along spines not yet broken. Sam’s one chapter into _Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell_ when he notices Dean standing in line at the checkout.

On the sidewalk, Dean pulls a black moleskin ledger from the shopping bag and tucks it inside his jacket. Sam raises an eyebrow. “You bought a journal?”

Dean shrugs. “Chicks dig writers, dude. Especially in this town.”

@@@

Adrian Smith’s memorial is sparsely attended. Sam’s seen this before in dozens of towns—huge turnout for the tragedy, not so much for the tedious business of mourning. People seek out the twisted metal, the arterial spray, the shell of a house hollowed by fire; they swarm the blinking red and blue lights, biting their nails behind police barricades, and the spectacle satisfies their fear. _Look what didn’t happen to me_ , they think and then they can get on again with living.

Smith’s mother sits alone; she wrings a handkerchief in her hands but she doesn’t cry. Her eyes are not empty or blank or any of the other clichés associated with grief. Her expression is instead angry, and her lips tighten periodically as if she is choking back a scream. Sam’s seen that look before; it stared back at him from motel mirrors for weeks after Jess died.

When the service concludes, he and Dean approach Mrs. Smith. Sam hates this part of hunting, hates that he witnesses so much sorrow that he must numb himself or else be unable to work the job. He’s disgusted with the talent he has for exploiting the weaknesses of others, the knack he has for getting brokenhearted widows and orphans to open up to him. Sometimes Sam thinks his ability to unqualifiedly empathize has all but atrophied. 

“Mrs. Smith,” Sam says. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” He bends his head and speaks to the floor. “Adrian and I hadn’t been friends long, but he was a good guy and he’ll be missed.”

“Thank you.” Her voice is wet, halting, as if she is swallowing the tears she will not allow herself to shed. Sam gears up to deceive her, to create the lie that will give them access to Smith’s suicide manuscript, but Mrs. Smith preempts him. “I almost didn’t come today,” she says. “I’m flying out to my sister’s in three hours, and I almost didn’t come. But I’m glad I did. I’m glad to know that Adrian will be missed.” She does cry then, loud sobs that feel vaguely blasphemous in the cool stillness of the chapel. Dean offers Mrs. Smith a Kleenex she doesn’t need and then jerks his head toward the door, his hand on Sam’s arm pulling him firmly away. Sam looks back once and Mrs. Smith’s shoulders are still shaking, her cries still breaking against the stained glass and the quiet.

@@@

“I’ve got nothing,” Sam says. His half of Smith’s manuscript is spread across Mrs. Smith’s coffee table and he’s flagged several pages with Post-It notes. Dean’s half is stacked neatly in his lap and Sam realizes when Dean starts at his voice that his brother hasn’t read anything in a long while. Sam sighs and continues. “It’s just a novel. A really good, really creepy novel. There’s no occult references or mentions of the supernatural. Just a psychotic dad with a leather fetish and some seriously wacked out grandparents.”

Dean glances at the photo on the mantel, Mrs. Smith and her son and a man Sam assumes is Smith’s father. The man’s eyes are dark, just like the father’s in the book and his grip on teenaged Smith’s shoulder looks almost painful. “Hey, you don’t think . . .” Sam begins but Dean cuts him off.

“I don’t know what to think, Sammy. We can’t jump to the conclusion that Smith’s dad was an evil son of a bitch just based on this novel and anyway what does it matter if he was? How does that connect to the Proud suicides?” Dean can’t take his eyes off the photograph; he presses his lips together and breathes slowly and evenly through his nose. Sam’s not sure exactly what’s going on, but he can tell that Dean is on his way to freaking out about something.

“You’re right,” Sam says. “Let’s get out of here.” 

Back at the hotel, Dean paces in front of the window, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as he wears a track in the carpet. Just when Sam can’t stand it any longer, when he’s ready to call Dean on this shit, Dean clears his throat. “How does Chinese sound? I’ll go pick it up.” Then he’s out the door before Sam can even remind his brother that he wants an extra fortune cookie.

The laptop is on Dean’s bed and Sam doesn’t mean to snoop. He really doesn’t. But there it is, Dean’s journal peeking out from under his pillow and Sam can’t help himself. When he opens the journal, Sam sees that the first few pages are filled. 

Sam will never tell Dean, but he remembers dying. He’s not sure what came after, but the dying he remembers. He felt the gravel digging into his knees and all his extremities quickly numbing until he registered only the distant heat of Dean’s hands on his cheeks. The whole world irised shut, everything spiraling down to just Dean’s face. Sam had tried to speak but his mouth wouldn’t move; his voice wouldn’t work anywhere except in his own head. He’s not sure exactly what he meant to say—maybe _goodbye_ , maybe _sorry_ , maybe just _Dean_. The point is, Sam understands that urge to say one last thing before the chance is taken away forever. He gets that Dean wants to leave something behind, something Sam can hold in his hands and leave his thumbprints on and memorize the way they’ve memorized the entries in Dad’s journal. _Well, screw that_ , Sam thinks. Dean isn’t going to hell, not next spring, not ever if Sam can help it, and damn it if Sam will let Dean act like his imminent death is a foregone conclusion. He won’t let Dean write him a secret goodbye that he’ll never get to read because Dean isn’t going to die. Feeling vaguely ashamed of himself, Sam begins to read. 

_My first alias was Cowboy. Dad gave me the hat and a pair of plastic pistols for my third birthday and I held up Mom for cookies in the kitchen for the better part of a year. I felt it even then, the seduction of becoming something you’re not—the power in sliding on that hat and turning into Cowboy, looking up at the world from under its brim like I had secrets, like I was dangerous. I’ve been so many people since then, I sometimes think that I’ve forgotten the way back to who I really am._

Sam stops, surprised. This isn’t what he expected. What he’s reading doesn’t sound like his brother at all. Oh, it’s about Dean; Sam remembers playing with those pistols himself as a kid. But this isn’t Dean’s voice; it’s someone else’s and Sam is unnerved. He turns back to the journal in his hands and continues reading.

_My brother doesn’t understand how I can believe in hell but not in heaven. “One can’t exist without the other, Dean,” he says, like I’m retarded or something, like everything’s just that easy because he says so. I only believe in what I can see, what I can touch. Hell, I know. Hell is Sam’s body going cold and gray in my arms. Hell is waking up in the hospital and realizing that Dad won’t even show to watch me die. Before those things, hell was a one way ticket to California, two years of complete radio silence, childhood stairs clogged with smoke. I’ve been there so many times, this last trip won’t seem anything new. Layla said to me that faith is believing even when the miracles don’t happen. And I do believe. Just not in those Mysterious Ways she was talking about. I believe my gun will fire true if I consider it an extension of my arm and my car will get me anywhere I need to go if I treat her right and I believe in my brother. I believe that as long as Sam is alive the best part of me remains._

Sam thumbs a tear from the corner of his eye. This sounds more like Dean—maybe a little more polished than anything Sam’s ever heard come out of Dean’s mouth, but still his brother all the same. Dean’s only written a few more sentences in the journal and Sam figures in for a penny, in for a pound, and reads the rest.

_Sometimes I watch Sam sleeping and I want to touch him. I think, “If I can just do this right, you’ll never leave. I can make it so you’ll never leave.”_

Sam’s heart hammers in his chest and hope spikes in his belly, sick and sweet and tinged with shame. He has never let himself imagine that Dean might share the screwed up desire that Sam has always been afraid to name, and he can’t believe that Dean actually committed his longing to paper so nakedly, that he laid this secret bare to the irrevocable nature of ink and paper. Sam’s hands are shaking and his breath is ragged and loud in his ears and he doesn’t hear the door open. When Sam finally looks up, Dean is frozen in the doorway, a plastic bag hanging from the crook of his elbow and a two liter of Coke rolling from his grip and into the bathroom.

**Chapter 3: Dean’s perspective**

Dean empties his arms of stir fry and egg rolls and then he sits on the bed across from Sam and avoids his brother’s eyes. The silence stretches out between them, long and unbroken except for the stutter start of the air conditioning unit in the window. Dean wants to be furious; he’d like to turn this overwhelming panic into anger at Sam for invading his privacy but Dean’s too busy trying not to vomit onto his shoes to manage a good rage. When Dean finally does speak, his voice comes up gravel and broken glass. “We’re not talking about this,” he says.

“What do you mean we’re not talking about this? Like hell we’re not talking about this. You wrote that you wanted, that you think about . . . We’re talking about this, Dean.” Sam sounds pissed off and determined and more miserable than he has in a long while.

Dean clenches his jaw so tightly his teeth grind together painfully and shakes his head. “No. We’re not. Because I figured it out. It’s that goddamn typewriter.”

@@@

 

Dean realized it sitting there in Mrs. Smith’s living room, his focus moving back and forth between a story about a man who completely terrified his son and Smith’s strained smiles in the family photos on the walls. Dean knew the whole Kerouac thing was completely out of character for him but he had been dwelling on all the shit that scared him most pretty much since they rolled into Oxford and the compulsion to write these fears down was irresistible. But that wasn’t true, either; he hadn’t felt this way until the field trip to Proud museum and suddenly Dean knew. 

Now Dean hunkers in the tall grass at the edge of some pastureland out in the county, shaking salt on the typewriter while Sam squirts it down with gasoline.

“I can’t believe you didn’t sweep the typewriter, Dean,” Sam says. “And then you touched it. What the fuck were you thinking?”

Dean strikes a match and tosses it onto the F key. “It was H. P. Lovecraft’s, Sammy. I was excited. Anyway, shut up. You’re not the one who got mind raped by some demon muse.” Dean’s ears pop then, as if the pressure has changed, and he feels the heavy wave of terror that’s been hanging over him recede. Sam looks at him curiously and Dean says, “I think it’s gone.”

“You ready to talk now?”

“Just let it go, Sammy. Let it go.”

Sam takes a deep breath. “What if I don’t want to let it go?” And then he does something that scares Dean more than anything else in his twenty eight years has—he grabs Dean by the shoulders and yanks him close, so close that Dean can feel the warmth of Sam’s breath on his face. Then Sam is kissing him, tilting Dean’s head back and curling one hand around his neck, Sam’s mouth hard and frantic and so fucking perfect that Dean can’t make himself pull away. Sam kisses him until Dean’s lips feel bruised, until his lungs are aching, until he’s trembling so badly he can barely stand. Sam breaks the kiss, his hands moving down Dean’s sides, gentling him, keeping him from bolting. Sam smiles uncertainly and says, “Did you think you were the only one?”

Dean can’t speak; this is fucked up and wrong and everything he’s ever wanted. He doesn’t want to break whatever magic is working here, so he tells Sam the only way he knows how. Slowly, carefully, as if Sam is in danger of shattering, Dean pulls Sam back to him and kisses him softly, Dean’s tongue flicking along the seam of Sam’s lips, opening him up and licking into the tender heat of his mouth. Sam moans low in his throat and twists his fingers almost viciously into Dean’s hair. Then they’re kneeling in the dirt and weeds and scrabbling at each other’s clothes, the fire blazing hot and threading flame through the grass that surrounds them.

Sam’s hand on his dick is the best thing Dean’s ever felt, the sweaty slide of his brother’s callused hand, his thumb dragging over the head on each stroke. Sam’s panting out Dean’s name; his voice is completely trashed, hoarse and needy and broken and Dean can’t hold back anymore and he comes into Sam’s fist. Sam’s cock jerks in Dean’s grip and then Sam is coming too, hot and slick and beautiful and Dean wipes the mess down the front of Sam’s button down.

“Jerk,” Sam says, but he’s grinning and for the first time in weeks Dean doesn’t think of either of them dying. He flops onto his back beside Sam and watches their corner of the field burn, wildflowers kicking up sparks to the sky.


End file.
